Iphone App

Smile For The Camera

Want to own a great iPhone app that allows you to take SOTM photos at any time or place? Fancy helping out a super charity at the same time, one which treats children with facial deformities?

Now you can do both by downloading the SOTM app. All the app's profits are going directly to Operation Smile, which provides expert medical treatment for children around the world who have a cleft lip and palate facial deformity.

The app allows you to take a photo of someone with your phone's camera, then digitally place a white space over the image, serving as a sheet of paper, as seen in the conventional SOTM photos. So you can create a SOTM with just your phone, whenever you want, without the need for pen, paper etc.

These digital SOTMs are then submitted to this site via email, to be posted here subject to moderation. A person can only be the actual subject of a SOTM once, but you can take as many pictures of other people as you like.

Now, not only will this be a fun thing for you to do with family and friends, but by downloading the SOTM app, you'll be helping someone to smile, quite literally, by helping to fund their life-changing operation via Operation Smile. Their work to fix such facial deformities literally transforms the lives and appearance of these children, as you'll see in some of the pictures on this page.

The app fees are £1.49 in the UK and $1.99 in the US - Apple take 30% of each fee, leaving the rest to go directly to Operation Smile.

Being able to smile is such a simple, yet vitally important thing to do, and these children are denied this most important of pleasures. The baby Ethiopian girl on the left here is seen shortly after having her lip fixed, and you can see the difference it's made to her and her mum. So I really hope that lots of you will download the app, encourage your friends to do the same, and help make children's lives better at the same time.

I was inspired to link this app idea to a charity after hearing how Rage Against the Machine gave the proceeds from their 2009 UK Christmas single, Killing In The Name Of, to the Shelter charity, which helps the homeless.

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Vital work

Founded in 1982, Operation Smile's treatments cost about £150 and it can take as little as 45 minutes to repair a child's cleft lip, thereby changing their lives forever. Approximately 180 downloads of the SOTM app will pay for a basic operation.

In each country where Operation Smile operates it invests in the creation of an Operation Smile foundation. That foundation recruits local medical volunteers, trains physicians, and raises funds and awareness for children suffering from facial deformities. Here's more about Operation Smile

These Operation Smile Foundations empower local physicians to provide free treatment to children year round. Through local projects, weekend clinics, and care centres local Operation Smile foundations provide free facial surgery to nearly 7,000 patients a year, co-ordinating treatments in more than 100 locations in over 30 countries annually.

Currently the SOTM app is only available on the iPhone - however, I'm looking for sponsorship to create it on the Android and Blackberry platforms. If anyone wants their company to become such a sponsor, at an estimated cost of about £1,500 then please do get in touch.

So, download the app right now, go take some SOTMs and let's fill the world with a few more smiles :-D